Wrinkles the Clown unmasks the real psychological threat to children; themselves
Wrinkles the Clown unmasks the real psychological threat to children; themselves
A still from Wrinkles the Clown (2019).
As someone who has lived through scary videos and horror films, Wrinkles the Clown mirrors one of the true foundations of my paranoia and excessive fearful state. This generation lives in the age where technology has been rampant and accessible to children of all ages. The fragile minds of kids are exposed to any part of the internet, even the ones that they are not supposed to go to. We will be talking about the one common thing that kids really love to check out: scary videos. Whether it is that green video of a rocking chair or that car that slowly drives down a hill, one thing’s for sure, it doesn’t end well for those who aren’t prepared for the surprises that come out in the end. Fear is easily one of the most terrifying, but entertaining feelings of all. We enjoy seeing people get scared from reaction videos, but little do kids know that this feeling, once abused, becomes a real psychological threat.
Wrinkles the Clown is an obscure documentary about Wrinkles, a man in Florida who dresses up as a creepy-looking clown as shown in the picture above. He is known for being called up by parents to scare their mischievous children. The documentary shines light on a lot of topics about kids and the internet and how a small video of a clown hiding under a little girl’s bed can spread like wildfire to scare a generation of children. By focusing on these, the documentary talks about the vulnerability of a child’s mind and the critical effects of their curiosity over the internet.
A still from Wrinkles the Clown (2019).
In the first part of the documentary, we are shown how parents would often see this flyer found in random places from walls to public bathrooms. These flyers come attached with the threatening face of Wrinkles the Clown, accompanied by a phone number, where they would hear a creepy clown threatening to come to their house and deal with their naughty kids. It starts with a couple of laughs from parents pranking their children but it’s later revealed by a professional psychologist in the documentary that this is “very misguided,” as continuously doing this would lead to a form of child abuse. Think about it, you are a parent calling and inviting a horrifying clown to your home to ‘deal’ with your children for being bad. We’ve all had that parent who would tell us of scary myths and superstitions to make us avoid doing bad things, but this can actually lead to a more complex consequence, branching from trust issues to paranoia.
A scene from the short film Lights Out (2013).
Have you ever had a phase, maybe from your childhood days, when you and your friends would watch scary videos on YouTube together? This is actually very common, whether it was those suspecting jumpscares from the end of a 30-second video, or the scary sightings of creepy aliens or ghosts that you found in your recommendations. Some kids would even dig further and find Illuminati videos about Disney, or satanic messages in songs when played backwards. Children were capable of just searching these up on the web with just a few clicks. I remember falling victim to it, just me and my group of young friends who were free to explore the deep web and come across things we should never have. I had one scene from a supernatural horror short film titled Lights Out (2013) which had such a ghastly horrifying scene that was imprinted in my mind for years to the point that I eventually stopped looking for scary videos.
A still from Wrinkles the Clown (2019).
We cannot blame these kids though; they are young and free with no adult supervision to guide them on the things they watch. Creepypastas such as Slenderman, Bloody Mary, or games like playing Hide and Seek at Midnight (where a mysterious figure will come and find you) are things which easily spread because everybody likes the story and the fear these can bring. It is so easy to lure children, because everyone likes to be scared sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with a good, little scare from a fictional story or character that’s terrifying, yet entertaining. But the dangerous parts come when children go to different extents to mimic these actions or stories. Take for example, a lot of videos go viral for people trying to summon Bloody Mary, where they look in the mirror at night and say the name Bloody Mary three times. Some even get a lot of views just by doing the Charlie Charlie trend. Those are just minor issues. The major ones are when it causes deadly harm like in the Slenderman stabbing, where two 12-year-old girls lured their best friend and stabbed her 19 times because they claimed that the fictional character Slenderman said so.
That incident could just be the tip of the iceberg. Some could create serious damage to their lives and others if they fall trap to the stories they hear. In the documentary, we get to see kids who called Wrinkles the Clown explicitly threatening they’ll burn him alive or stab him if they ever see him near them. These threats are a sign of the abusive result of fear, which got even worse when the clown sightings started rapidly increasing. Some say it was a harmless prank that led to a mass hysteria of panic and rage on the streets where some people rallied and tried to find clowns because of the pranks that stripped people of their personal safety. In the documentary, we also see kids starting to wear clown masks and using fake weapons and imitating the things they see, influenced by the rampant violence showcased.
I, personally, was exposed to a lot of horror films as a kid. That doesn’t mean I’m immune to fear now as I’ve grown up. At that time, I was scared restless, often staying up late because I couldn’t sleep, wondering if a ghost would appear in my bedroom window. And now, this habit has stuck to me. I literally make pillow walls around my bed as if it will protect me from a supernatural being or a psychopath who comes knocking at my door. I would often convey unnecessary feelings of fear or paranoia from public places. You would easily see me flinch whenever I’d hear a creaking sound or a quick touch on the shoulder. These are the long-term effects that could happen if you are overexposed to fear, that it becomes a pattern.
A scene from IT (1990).
The documentary doesn’t only show the bad effects that this hysteria has cost children. In the past, clowns were always painted as this funny, goofy entertainer that plays with balloons and tries to make children laugh or smile. Nowadays, we see often in the film industry how it portrays clowns as scary entities who are out to devour children or kill people, the concept of killer clowns widespread from the release of It (1990), Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988), Poltergeist (2015), and even the Joker character from The Dark Knight (2008) and other Batman films. Clowns have been painted now as this awful, dangerous character and made the image of clowns slowly degraded.
A still from Wrinkles the Clown (2019).
Nevertheless, despite all the negative outcomes and reflections that Wrinkles the Clown has done, the documentary tries to show a positive outlook between all of it. In the second half of the documentary, we finally get to hear a voice-edited perspective of the man behind Wrinkles the Clown. He shares a lot of experiences and how he has let go of his identity since the clown sighting hysteria and the violent calls until recently in 2019, he resurfaced with his costume, and he encountered children who remembered him. Many fans came up to take pictures and really seemed to love his character and the fun-fear he shared with his viewers. The documentary also shows how most of the pictures of Wrinkles being in creepy, random places were all created by him, and the video of him coming out of a closet drawer of a little girl was orchestrated, even edited by him. Its positive outlook is a hit-or-miss weighing from all the heavy topics it dealt with in the first half, but it was a touching finale to see children and teens come up to him, take pictures, as they hug and share a laugh. Like Wrinkles said, “At the end of the day, Wrinkles is just a guy in a mask in a suit.”
